Mentoring framework?

[Li-Wen Hsu]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 4:01 AM linimon at portsmon.org
linimon at portsmon.org <linimon at portsmon.org> wrote:
>
>
> > On 04/25/2021 1:58 PM Mason Loring Bliss <mason at blisses.org> wrote:
> > I'd like to contribute, and something that occurs to me is the notion of
> > formal mentoring.
>
> Here are my observations: email is a pretty slow way of doing this kind of
> thing.  Yes, us old-timers are quite used to it, but it kind of lacks a
> "collaborative" feel.
>
> A lot of time this kind of work gets done on various IRC channels.  They at
> least (usually) give quicker feedback.
>
> But koobs@ has been putting a lot of effort into getting Discord to be a first-
> class interactivity space for FreeBSD.   So, let me suggest trying out one of
> the channels there, as see if it's more like what you are looking for.
>
> (disclaimer: I am not saying "this will solve all our problems".  I'm saying that
> right now it has momentum and seems worth supporting.)

Yes there is no silver bullet, and IRC and discord are great tools for
fast respon time.

But please remember, they are not very good to keep things permanent,
to let knowledge accumulated.

So, my suggestion is, trying to use mailing list as possible, because
the archived mails can also help others, not just two or few people,
it can maximize the impact of the people who answer the questions.

I like to use IRC, but sometimes I found that the "right people" are
not always available, and it is more difficult when it comes to time
zone issues. If it happens to find the right person, and get the issue
resolved. It is awesome and it will be good to have those experiences
be kept. For that purpose, the document is still the best thing, I
think in the open source world, things are more in an asynchronized
way, and documents can solve the issue that the mentor and mentee
can't be in the same time and space. And I believe that's also a good
way to make contributions.

In short, the "mentoring program" begins when you send a mail to a
mailing list, you just need to describe your issues more clear, and be
a bit patient to wait for others to reply. And once the issue has been
resolved, sort it and put it to the official documents, we have
docs.freebsd.org, wiki.freebsd.org, and man pages, all for different
(and may overlap) purposes.

Best,
Li-Wen